Slack has secured significant new investment money that’s boosted its valuation to $5.1 billion. The workplace instant-messaging service confirmed Monday it raised $250 million from Japanese firm SoftBank.

Instant messaging platform WhatsApp has outlined its two-pronged approach to help businesses reach out to customers through its service and is running pilots with several mid-sized companies in India, its largest market globally.

The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a global observation network for detecting censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation, suggested on Monday night that Chinese internet service providers started blocking access to WhatsApp on September 23.

Back in May, China’s biggest messaging app has been unblocked in Russia. Access to WeChat was restored by Russian authorities nearly a week after the app was taken offline for running afoul of the country’s information laws.

According to a Facebook-commissioned study by Nielsen, 56% of people surveyed would rather message a business than call customer service, and 67% expect to message businesses even more over the next two years.